Wednesday, July 17, 2013

On Role-Playing (Part 10 of 11)

Cook writes, “rules become
less important in this style.” For God’s sake, why? Because you’re not fighting
all the time and 80% of the rules are geared to combat? Okay…but what about
other rules: like spells and skills and alignment and race?

Cook writes, “since combat
isn’t important, game mechanics take a back seat to character development.” What the f? Character development is
part of the game mechanics (and a big
part of 3rd edition). UNLESS what he means is PERSONALITY
development, which is a different thing…and again, personality can be developed
just fine in active, adventuring-type adventures, too, due to the choices a
player makes.

Cook writes, “skills take
precedence over combat bonuses.” Did you just frigging write that “rules become
less important” and “game mechanics take a back seat?” Then why O why, if this
is true would SKILLS, perhaps the stupidest part of this stupid edition
suddenly rise to prominence…especially if “whole gaming sessions pass without
making a single die roll?” Because everyone’s taking 10 and taking 20? That’s a
pretty important game mechanic if you’re not rolling dice. Of course, using a
skill is NOT role-playing anyway. Why am I bothering to write a rebuttal to
this half-wit?

Cook writes, “feel free to
change rules to fit the player’s roleplaying needs.” If the rules don’t matter,
why bother changing them? If we’re going to be involved in a game, rather than
sitting around writing communal fiction, then don’t we need rules? Or is Cook
trying to throw a patent on the idea that ANY type of “communal storytelling,”
regardless of rules/mechanics is the same thing as “playing Dungeons & Dragons?” ‘Cause that’s
just stupid-stupid shit.

Yes, I’m going to change
the rules to meet my player’s needs (note his use of the singular possessive…is
each player supposed to have their own needs met even though they each operate
under different standards?). Tammy can cast ANY spell in the book, at any time
because she’s a “powerful wizard.” Joey can use any feat in the game because
he’s “the greatest hero that ever lived.” But it doesn’t matter much because
I’m “streamlining” combat: roll D6 and if your roll equals or exceeds the DM’s
then you win the encounter. You can add your level to the roll. Every three
game sessions you go up in level…now we can focus on role-playing our
“political negotiation” adventure and develop our personalities without
worrying about gaining XP through the combat.

Are we still playing
“D&D” at that point? Is it only D&D because my “elfin thief” has
pointy-ears?

It doesn’t matter, really.
It’s fairly obvious that “role-playing” isn’t a big part of 3E. Other than this
section, there are only two places where role-playing is addressed (or, really,
that the term “role-playing” is used). The first is a section called
“role-playing monsters” which gives advice on how a PC with using a
non-standard species for a character might adjust the creature’s normal
“monstrous tendencies” to better fit with a heroic adventuring party (it’s a
short section). The second section (which is even shorter) is regarding the
awarding of XP bonuses for “good role-playing.” The award works out to be about
the same as that given in the Rules Cyclopedia (1/20 of the amount needed to
reach the next level), but the guidelines are arbitrary and the examples poor:
players can expect a reward for saying something funny that makes the other
players laugh? I don’t know, it’s just…

Well, I know what it is:
it seems like they could have done a better job writing and articulating what
role-playing is and how it works, but the fact is that it was not a priority of game design in the third edition.And you know what? That’s just par for the course. This essay was NOT written to bash
WotC and smear its designers (I have other blog posts that already do that)…my ranting
rage is just another digression. THE POINT OF THIS SERIES is to explore the
following:

What role-playing IS (much more than what it isn’t), and

How Dungeons & Dragons, through its various incarnations, has
specifically informed us on the subject of role-playing.

Because it would seem I’ve
read something about this D&D thang
being some kind of “role-playing game,” and yet there appears to be a real
disconnect between players as to what exactly that means.

And after writing this
over the course of the week, I think I’m starting to figure out why that
disconnect exists: a combination of several reasons.

1) Different editions of D&D place different emphasis
on role-playing as an aspect of the game. D&D as originally conceived was a wargame, not an RPG. Over time,
the role-playing aspect (taking on your character’s persona in-play) received
more emphasis, before being backed off in 3rd Edition (not
necessarily on purpose but due to other aspects of play being emphasized and
prioritized), to being removed almost completely in 4th and 5th
edition. You can visualize it like a bell-curve.

[by the way, people: do NOT bother telling me that you CAN role-play
with 4th and 5th edition…I can “role-play” with Monopoly,
too, and it doesn’t make it an f’ing role-playing game]

2) Regardless of its relative emphasis, D&D has never
prioritized the articulation of role-playing. I really don’t think this can be debated. Through the years the focus
of all editions have been on the exploration of dungeons and this has been the
prime emphasis of the rules. Despite calling itself a “roleplaying game”
D&D has never spent much word count on the subject, preferring to focus on
dungeon design, monsters, spells, treasures, combat rules, etc. Role-playing
was initially incidental, and its
never been wholly focused on – as a priority and feature of play – in any iteration.

3) Players (including DMs) are as guilty of assumption
with regard to role-playing as the game designers. Everyone seems to “know” what role-playing is…until
they start actually talking about it. It’s like the dirty secret within the
role-playing community that role-players don’t really want to talk about.

Do you know what I mean by
that? It’s like there are some people who have trouble confessing their play
(and enjoyment) or role-playing games to non-gamers, but even amongst gamers
themselves, there seems to be a stigma attached to admitting they
“role-play”…even to other players of role-playing games! That’s just like self-hate
or something. It’s like you’ll be judged as one of “those” types of gamers if
you admit that you like to (God forbid!) PRETEND to be your character at the
table. Pretty soon you’ll be wearing a fucking cape or something!

Jesus, what a
dysfunctional bunch of people we are. And I’m talking about humans, not gamers.

Role-playing is the act of
playing pretend, but it’s “pretend all the way.” Like when you’re kids playing
at recess and you say, “I’m Luke Skywalker, you’re Han Solo.” Or “I’m Batman,
you’re Superman.”Or even, “I’m
Joe Montana, you’re Jerry Rice.” It’s understood (when you’re a kid) that you
are NOT really these individuals, you are simply pretending to be them for the
moment. You pretend you’re fighting Galactus, or shooting Stormtroopers, or
throwing TD passes in the Super Bowl. You know you’re really NOT that
person…it’s just pretend…but while
you’re pretending, you’re not thinking like little Jimmy, you’re trying to
think like “your guy.” The kid playing Han Solo doesn’t say “Okay I’m pulling
out my lightsaber and using the Force,”
because that’s not what Han Solo does…get it?

We did this kind of thing
a lot as kids: I can remember playing Star Raider (an old Atarivideo game) with my buddy and pretending we were actual Galactic
Heroes. We even had names: “Starhawk” or “Blackstar” or something (I don’t
remember) and his sidekick “Asteroid Jack.” Now Star Raider was not an RPG in
any sense of the term…it was space-ship shooter with a POV of being in the
cockpit and was, in fact, a one-player
game. But there was two of us playing, so one would be responsible for
“navigation” (checking coordinates on a separate screen and watching the radar
for approaching enemies) while the other guy was the main “pilot” (in charge of
actual flying and shooting). It wasn’t weird…it was just pretending.

4 comments:

As a fan of this blog I feel compelled to say that this series of posts is getting harder and harder to stomach. I'm not sure what the point of these posts was supposed to be but it seems to have derailed somewhere. It is coming off as kind of sad honestly, calling people 'retarded' and 'halfwit' is pretty unnecessary.

+1 Pierce; I guess I am not going to read it anymore. Just because a game doesn't match YOUR idea of what roleplaying is, doesn't mean that it's NOT a roleplaying game. The best you can say is it doesn't meet your expectations (and you have every right to say THIS.)As I just mentioned, it's not science (and I have titles to say this; I am a mathematician by profession.) Yet you make it sound like you have PROVED something. Unfortunately, an approximately correct hypothesis doesn't imply an approximately correct thesis. Since your definition of roleplaying is pretty subjective, your conclusions are, too; as a corollary, resorting to name calling is just sad.

The personal attacks here are distasteful. It would have been far better to focus on the ideas.

You had the beginning of an interesting idea at the beginning of this series (that taking the role of a PC can be accomplished by action choices within the game world rather than thespianism at the table in real life). Unfortunately, it seems to have been derailed by vitriol (perhaps unintended) and an insistence to frame things as objective truth rather than as an interesting way to roleplay that others might want to try.

Gotta go with the commenting trend on this one. I've been loving the essay, but your distaste for WotC D&D has overwhelmed your basic point in these last couple posts.

You even conclude that no version of D&D has really emphasized role-playing in your sense or gone out of its way to tell people how to do it, but only the recent editions come in for a rather off-putting level of vitriol.

As you say in the essay, that part is a digression from your point, and you should consider editing it out if you ever produce a "final" collected version.